BOOKS : HULL IS OTHER PEOPLE

Nearly ten years after the death of Philip Larkin in December 1985, a society has been set up to promote fresh interest in the laugh- a-minute, fun-loving poet-librarian of Hull. Anthony Thwaite, his friend for many years, is the president and vice-presidents include Seamus Heaney, Melvyn Bragg and Malcolm Bradbury: Larkin admirers who wish to join up should write to the Secretary at the address below.

The Philip Larkin Society is officially launched at the Hull Festival of Literature where a number of events have been organised in association with its members - though they tend to talk about their own work rather than his. Today, Anthony Thwaite appears at the Mortimer Suite, City Hall (7.30pm, pounds 5/pounds 3); tomorrow Larkin's biographer and friend Andrew Motion reads at Waterstone's in Jameson St (12.45pm, free).

The festival has been going since 1992, and, surprisingly, this is the first year it has made a special feature of Larkin. But then, as Festival Director David Porter makes clear, Hull has a wealth of literary associations: there's Andrew Marvell, Douglas Dunn (a University librarian under Larkin), novelist Winifred Holtby and Roger McGough. But isn't he better known as a Liverpool poet? Turns out he's another University man. "Oh yes, we're quite shameless," laughs Porter.

The festival also sees the launch of a booklet mapping the "Philip Larkin Trail", which takes you round his lodgings, hang-outs and sites featured in the poems, including "quite a lot of pubs", according to its editor Brian Dyson. Maybe Larkin wasn't such a miserable sod after all.

8 The Philip Larkin Society, c/o Dept of American Studies, University of Hull, HU6 7RX.

Hull Literature Festival box office: 01482 226655